"The Newspeak prototype is now available at http://newspeaklanguage.org/downloads/ . "

Yes, the long awaited Newspeak is finally released! It's far from being complete but at least something that runs is out. I was in a class about Actor Programming Languages and Systems last semester and we were supposed to talk about Newspeak (and possibly do a group project on it if people were interested). Unfortunately, at that time, only the language specifications were released. And it's not as fun just reading about the specs and proving things about it.

The other good news? It runs on an Intel Mac. I was initially under the impression that it would only run on Windows.

Other initial impression: the UI is much improved compared to other Squeak implementations (which it is based on). Like the Pharo project, Newspeak is probably aiming at creating an professional, open-source Smalltalk platform. Unlike Pharo, it still has remnants of eToys though.

Looks like I might be canceling some initial reading plans to play around with this over the weekend.